Posts Tagged ‘Race Card’

Last night the #solidarityisforwhitewomen tag raced to the top of the Twitter trending chart, treating people not only to an amusing left-on-left slap fight, but also providing a glimpse into the fever swamps of far-left victimhood identity politics.

It’s an unholy marriage of Marxism and racial identity politics, brewed and decanted among far-left community organizers and tenured faculty members. The basic idea is that victimhood equals saintliness, in that the more of a victim you are, the less of a white capitalist hetronormative patriarchal oppressor you are. (Feel free to add another dozen or so far-left buzzwords to the preceding sentence.) This is done both in order to assert who has the greater moral claim on the spoils of big government, and to cow others and guilt-trip them into giving in to your demands, because black victimhood automatically trumps white privilege, etc. It’s also to keep people firmly ensconced in the left’s group-think herd mentality rather than thinking critically. It’s the language of thought-terminating cliches, designed to end debate by placing those employing it higher on the hierarchy of victimhood than those it is deployed against.

As for what brought on this hashtag, well, it’s a rich, zesty, resentful stew of left-wing grievance-mongering.

Part of it seems to be backlash over all the attention lavished on Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg’s “how to have it all by climbing the corporate ladder to CEO and still having children while promoting the sisterhood” book, which seems particularly near and dear to the hearts of white female business writers everywhere.

When Lean In takes up all the feminist oxygen for weeks and WF don't get why WOC aren't excited and celebrating. #solidarityisforwhitewomen

Part of it seems to stem from some white feminists actually daring to be critical of radical Islam, which (for complex and mysterious reasons) seems to trump white feminism on the hierarchy of victimhood.

The lesson: On the far left, you are not allowed to speak when your superiors on the victim hierarchy chart are speaking. As usual on the far-left, “let’s have a dialog on race” turns out to mean “you’ll shut up and listen while I condemn you, bigot.”

Of course, underlying all of this is a real truth that none dare speak out loud: The Democratic Party as currently constructed spreads the benefits of its patronage disproportionately to old white politicians and their favored cronies. Just look at the paleness of hue of all those green energy subsidy recipients. Why, think of all the community organizing and diversity consulting sinecures that money could have underwritten! The Pigford scandal is a drop in the bucket by comparison. The Hillary Clintons, Harry Reids and Nancy Pelosis are always going to have first call at the trough of big government largess, because that’s the way the Democratic Party’s spoil system works.

But above all, this blue internecine warfare is designed to do one thing: to keep those on the identity politics left as part of the herd. Those fixated on victimhood and inter-feminist doctrinal differences are far less likely to question why their policies have failed so badly when allowed to run their course in Detroit, or why 72% of blacks are born out of wedlock, thanks in large measure to to the welfare state.

The racism comes in when Drudge, Rush, the people who giddily retweeted the link, do a mental calculation that if enough people would just see this video they would support Romney, because it plays on the same racist stereotypes that are usually trotted out this time of the election cycle. The video posted on Drudge and played on Limbaugh was a black lady who has all the standard visual cues of being poor — messed-up teeth and skin, her waistline, her yelling. Oh, and if cues aren’t enough, she talks in racial terms: “Everybody in Cleveland, all the minorities got a phone. Keep Obama president, you know, he gave us a phone, he’ll give us more.”

Let’s dissect that a little. When Reeve says “do a mental calculation…because it plays on the same racist stereotypes ” what she’s saying is that she can read people’s minds, and she knows their intent is racist. And then she admits that the subject of the video talks in racial terms. So instead of putting the onus for bringing race into the discussion on the subject of the video herself who brings it up, she puts it on conservatives she can tell are committing thoughtcrimes because of her amazing telepathic powers.

Unfortunately, those of us without Elspeth Reeve’s extra-sensory perception are left at a loss to figure which amusing videos, at least those whose subjects happen to be black, are in fact racist. Given that I happen to be a white conservative living in Texas (and therefore someone already with a -5 on saving throws against liberal accusations of racism), obviously I need help in determining such things.

So where else can I go except the source itself? Help me, Elspeth Reeve, your psychic powers are the only hope I have for determining whether an amusing video that involves black people is racist or not!

Help me out here, Elspeth: Is Afro-Ninja racist?

How about this black woman saying Obama is going to pay her mortgage? Is that racist?

How about Obama stumbling around while answering a question? Is that racist?

How about Obama talking about visiting all 57 states? Is that racist?

How about black comedians dealing with racial issues. Is that racist? (NSFW warning applies to the language in the next few videos.) Is Dave Chappelle playing black white supremacist Clayton Bigsby racist?

How about Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase’s word association test?

How about Clevon Little in the famous sheriff-welcoming scene from Blazing Saddles?

Help me out here, Elspeth. Put your psychic powers to work. Which of these are racist, and which are merely funny?

Still more Wisconsin recall tidbits continue to trickle out. I may have a more substantial reaction to a particularly egregious type of liberal self-delusion regarding the results later, but here’s a nice sampler of links:

“Public employee unions insist that dues money be deducted from members’ paychecks and sent directly to union treasuries. So in practice, public employee unions are a mechanism for the involuntary transfer of taxpayers’ money to the Democratic Party.”

The unions’ defeat marks a historical inflection point. They set out to make an example of Walker. He succeeded in making an example of them as a classic case of reactionary liberalism. An institution founded to protect its members grew in size, wealth, power and arrogance, thanks to decades of symbiotic deals with bought politicians, to the point where it grossly overreached. A half-century later these unions were exercising essential control of everything from wages to work rules in the running of government — something that, in a system of republican governance, is properly the sovereign province of the citizenry.

“The left picked this fight, on the issue and in the place of its choice; it chose to recall Walker because it believed it could win a showcase victory. That judgment was fatally flawed.”

The Walker reforms hurt AFSCME in Wisconsin almost as badly as Ronald Reagan hurt PATCO, the air traffic controller union he famously crushed in 1981. Public sector workers have deserted their unions in droves since the state clipped union bargaining rights and stopped automatic collection of dues. After a string of bitter, humiliating and expensive defeats, labor in Wisconsin will now be a shadow of its former self, lacking the troops, the money and the morale.

The public sector unions are critical to what remains of the American left. The power of the public service unions in Democratic politics pulls the entire party to the left and gives ideas that are important to the left an access to power that they would otherwise lack. But more important than that, they provide a kind of center to a movement that otherwise threatens to fragment into antagonistic cliques.

It is not clear the left was outspent in its attempts to reverse Gov. Walker’s reforms. And the widely-repeated claim that the left was outspent by more than 7-to-1 in the most recent recall election is clearly false.

In 2002, when I asked Nealy what she did with all the money sluiced into her account by the Citizens Council candidate, she called me a racist.

It’s strangely heartening to learn that black political functionaries are just as eager to play the race card on their fellow liberals as they are on conservatives.

I want to point out that black southern Dallas has consistently voted against honesty, against progress, against inter-ethnic neighborhood cooperation and against any kind of civic responsibility in citywide elections.

But we are told nevertheless — we are beaten about the ears, in fact — that it’s everybody else’s job to clean up and bring prosperity to the black precincts.

After decades of watching this dismal scam operate, you may have to forgive me if I have become a bit jaded. I look at the editorial campaign of The Dallas Morning News, 10 holes in the bucket or something, about all the stuff it’s my job to clean up in South Dallas, and I can’t help wondering if this isn’t part of the same old sleazy political deal.

You know what? I’m starting to wonder if maybe it isn’t time for southern Dallas to clean up its own crap and leave me the hell alone.

Mr. Schutze and I might differ over our respective definitions of “progress,” but I suspect the rest is accurate.

Maybe it’s time for the rest of Dallas to start consciously and deliberately voting against southern Dallas, as long as southern Dallas continues to support the Price/Nealy machine. How the hell can we be expected to fix all the holes in southern Dallas’ damn bucket if we don’t fix the holes in our own first?

Moving from the specifics of the Price case to the issue of urban black machine politics in general, a few politically incorrect questions:

How pervasive is this type of black political machine corruption in other cities with significant black populations?

To what extent has black America’s overwhelming allegiance to the Democratic Party created such corruption, since it prevents the sort of inter-party competition that could sweep the corrupt from office?

To what extent has the Democratic Party’s need for black votes encouraged such corruption, by making them turn a blind eye to it as long as they votes keep rolling in?

Fair or not, the impression I get from the Price case, from the decades-long mismanagement of Detroit, etc., is that a significant portion (and perhaps a majority) of the urban black community is just fine with pervasive political corruption, as long as it’s black politicians that are the ones with their fingers in the pie. Is this impression correct, or is it too cynical even for me?

It should be no surprise that Democratic senate candidate Paul Sadler supports the the whole liberal checklist of Obama initiatives. However, what’s surprising is how easily he plays the “Obama’s opponents are racist” card on his fellow Texans:

“If he had an ‘R’ behind his name—and unfortunately, in some parts of this state, if his skin color was different—they would hail him as one of the greatest presidents of this country.”

I’m sure Texans are absolutely delighted to hear they’re racists for opposing Obama’s failed Blue State model of big government, out-of-control spending and higher taxes. The Race Card used to be the last refugee of black liberal scoundrels. Now it seems to be the first refugee of even white Democrats.

Later on he mentions that “fundraising isn’t going too well.” Imagine that.